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All content copyright 2014-2018 by Judith M. Smith.

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Labor Day, Then and Now

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I hope you had a great holiday! Hard to believe this marks the unofficial end of summer — it is 90 degrees up here in Maryland, and the community pool was packed.

I dug around a little to see what Emmett was doing for Labor Day 100 years ago. He was in Pensacola at this point, and not in Washington, D.C., as Congress was not in session. There were some pretty interesting doings around Pensacola:

Aerial Age Weekly, vol. 2, Sept 27, 1915 reports that there was an aeronautics demonstration at Palmetto Beach. This was confirmed by an article in The Pensacola Journal for September 6, 1915, which reported that the Pensacola Carnival Association (the organization that put on the Mardi Gras parades) had “…a picnic at Palmetto Beach, which had the largest attendance of any event of this kind in the history of Pensacola. A Gun Club “shoot,” aeroplane flights by naval aviators, baseball games, and fireworks at night were the attractions,” Money that was collected for the events at Palmetto Beach went toward the 1916 Mardi Gras parade celebrations — floats, decorations for the street, and so forth.

I’d love to find some photos from this event, just to see what it was like to be on the beach and witness Jennies and other similar craft flying overhead. There’s a great writeup of the Naval Air Station in 1913-1915 at this site, complete with photos of the kinds of planes Emmett and his friends would have seen regularly. Maybe the PCA saved their money and focused their parade energies on Mardi Gras, and not Labor Day back then?

Our Labor Day tradition is to attend the Labor Day Parade in Kensington. This is a suburb of D.C., only about five minutes away. It is a great community; has a wonderful old town area. The parade is definitely an old-school kind of parade, but with modern sensibilities and something for everyone.

If you hang on all the way through, I promise you’ll get a decent surprise! 🙂

First come the state troopers on horses:

Then, a marching band playing the Notre Dame fight song.

They were quite good. Gaithersburg HS is quite a schlep up I-270, not a neighborhood school.

Then, the politicians. What’s a parade without a bunch of talking heads? Because Maryland is a blue state, the Democrats came through first, in fairly decent old cars, throwing candy around for the kids.

Does your heart good to see the candidates out of the cars, mingling and slinging hard candy.

Here’s the candidate Roger Berliner in action. At this moment, he’s actually saying ‘Weird. Weird.’ I don’t know what he found weird.

There was about a five minute break in between Berliner’s car and the next item — which was this:

They kept the Dems separated from the Reps in the parade by about a good five minutes. Wouldn’t do to have a fist fight in the street.

The banner was followed by this guy:

A warm, fuzzy Republican. Imagine that.

And then, Maryland red candidates in their old timey cars. The first one through was this big old gas guzzling Thunderbird:

There was another sign on the other side of this car that said, “Be Different.” Interesting.

And then, the Party of Trump featured this ‘float’:

Yep. That is a Rolls Royce. We get the message, O Party of Trump.

I think the best part of the Republican entourage was the car that followed immediately: The Scooby Do Mystery Machine.

That is Shaggy, not Trump having a really bad hair day, handing out snacks to my kids.

All right. So, as I said earlier, the Kensington parade has a little of something for everyone.

Jews for Jesus

Falun Dafa…which I don’t know anything about.

The Montgomery County Sheriff AND the Registrar of Wills (!)

The sheriff was followed by the Harmony Cornet Band (founded in 1916)

Then came the fleet of Kensington fire department equipment, which was rather flashy and loud. They had an old engine, too, but not as old as the 1927 one that the Bethesda FD trotted out over the Fourth of July.

So, the next little group was interesting. Great juxtaposition, I thought. Notice the antique ambulance in front….

An antique ambulance —

Followed by what looks to be a bunch of hippies.

A bunch of crazy youthful hippies, with Elvis, of course. What’s a parade without Elvis?

But then, you realize the hippies are with the next vehicle:

It was a bunch of wild and crazy senior citizens dancing to “Disco Inferno” from this place! Crazy! I hope I’m like them when I grow up.

OK. I’m getting to the last few shots. You’ll like them.

First, a suffragette!

Her costume looked very accurate!

Followed by this:

A 1903 Oldsmobile — electric, people!

Like I said. This parade always has a little something for everyone, and it did not disappoint.